Open Letter to the Opinion “Societies Offend Me”

We haven’t met, you and I, but I think that you and I speak the same language of writing our opinions down for the Yale Daily News. My favorite thing about writing opinions is saying what one thinks, and it seems the same with you. A true part of any morning is to feel the breeze and morning drinks, while I sit and crack open a paper to read about our daily ideas that we share among these very pages! But to whom would these writings be for, if one didn’t speak his mind? Even if that means a disagreement among close friends as us.

This opinion is why I felt moved to take to the pages once again, to share what I believe to be the important issues. It’s this: You, in a recent one, had one about all the differences of societies — where they come from, where they are, who sits in them and what they did to make you so mad at them. I understand you’re upset. Let’s face facts: It’s hard and challenging for some people of different ideas to cope with things that so many other people cope with at the same time. So, Mr. Scott, let me help you try to understand why one might think a different position of secret societies, because if you keep being so mad about them, you might never get into one!

Let me disclose a bit myself: I’ve gotten many envelopes on my door from all the societies: Bins, Taps, Caps, Cans, Hat, Tomb, Bazillus, Snakes, Secret One and one or two I can’t even begin to name! Each one had the writing on it, to me, of my name, in the big pens you speak of. I, for one, was glad it had both my names because that means they truly knew it. You should not have thrown yours away, Mr. Scott — you need it!

I felt so anxious when I looked at the envelopes. Indeed, as you say, they were stuck with a sticky seal. Should I open them? If I did, I would truly know that which was inside them. Would there be words there? If there were, then I would have to read them all to know just what it was that they said. We all know that words can be destroying, humiliating, pretentious and big. Would these words be those?

I read it, regardless of my cares, and it was just a simple thing: to meet us at a time in a place with a thing. Is that really too much for one to do? Is that really the “dramatic” task you claim it to be? I myself am asked things of this sort all the time in daily life. Everything is at a place! Everything is at times. And often, you bring a thing. You always have to be there at a time, even if it’s just grandma’s birthday, or at a friend’s house. Are you truly saying that to ask us to be there at a minute like any other is a judgment?

But here, Mr. Scott, is what we disagree about the most. When I give and receive an AutoBio, it will be a moment to enjoy, not to hate like you! I will be there with my closest pals and buddies, the ones who just want to know me for my personality! If it were everyone in the audience, like at Yale as you suggest, then what about he who gets nervous? He who runs and screams away? Or he, even, who pees? Are you forgetting him, Mr. Scott? Isn’t this just the scary thing that you claim to hate?

You claim that a society might make us into the sort of friends you might not want. But who are you to say what are the sort of friends you want and what you don’t want? In my opinion, each of us could be a friend if we were in a big society together. And isn’t that what society truly is? If I had a friend, he would be in the society with me, not out of it like you who hates them. We and you are all in the Yale world, so big and special. This place, where we got in for a letter too, is already a society filled with all of us. Come on and be in it, the water is great! Even though you are swimming with all of us too, you might not even know it.